The Rules (updated, see 13 - 13.5)

[Wedge]

The Rules
These rules have been drafted between FirstSigns and the first 100 members of the Message Board, they are now to be considered approved, and will only be edited for the sake of clarity.

It is our pleasure to provide several web-services to our Members, and you can view all our Services on our main website. All of our information services are offered for free, and of course, the Message Board offers several features, all of which must be considered as privileges, and not 'rights'. The use of our Message Board is a privilege, along with such features as Private Messages (PMs) and Avatars et cetera.

If any Rules need amending or adding, please start or continue a thread in the *FirstSigns* Forum.

The Safety Rules

1. You must Post. Inactive accounts will be removed after emailing you twice. This is to keep the community confident about 'who is who' and to reduce the concern that Journalists or Researchers are lurking. Journalists and Researchers are not allowed to join without having emailed info@firstsigns.org.uk

2. No personal attacks at all. Do not judge or disrespect people, have compassion and be willing to accept people are different and in different circumstances to yourself. It's acceptable to discuss ideas, but do not turn any aggression on to a person. Respect and Compassion are mandatory requirements here; you will lose your account if you are continuously lacking in R & C.

3. No Graphic Descriptions. It's OK to say that you have cut, but do not go into story telling detail about the methodology. We're here to explore the emotions of self injury, not the actual methods.

While we mention wounds and scars, we do not descrbe them, and we never describe how we hurt ourselves in any detail. We can mention the method ('I cut myself'; 'I hit myself' etc.) but we do not go into detail.

See Rule 12 for ED guidelines.

3.1) No Triggering pictures, which includes Avatars and links to triggering pictures. While triggers are personal, we expect every individual to take responsibility for the tone of their posting and their Avatar, if you are unsure about your Pictures, please contact a Mod with it.


3.2) No links to any Pro Sites AT ALL.

3.3) No links to triggering sites, nothing that depicts violence or abuse; please discuss this with a Mod if you're unsure.

3.4) No triggering User Names. While the board does not accept some triggering words as usernames, you must not use clever triggering names. By clever I might mean "Poetic descriptions of pain and SI". Words such as 'scar' 'scars' 'blood' and 'cut' must be avoided - please don't try to cleverly get around this rule with poetic or interesting words for such ideas.

4. Do not break confidence or copyright. Do not post transcripts of Instant Message Conversations or copies of emails without the permission of all parties. Do not copy text from the FirstSigns Message board for any reason, do not quote anyone, and do not tell anyone anything that is said here.

4.1) If you are very worried about someone's mental health, please Private Message (PM) them and ask 'how they are' and let them know that you are 'listening'. Do not offer to help them, do not offer to do anything for them, but let them know you are available on this board. DO NOT step outside these guidelines without emailing a Moderator.


4.2) Do not post pictures of other people's children. We do not have the infrastructure to support the verification of parents' permission. You may feel that as an Aunty or Godparent that you have the right to post pictures, however, FirstSigns would have to spend a great deal of time verifying permissions, and that is not why FirstSigns is here. Please do not post pictures of create links to galleries of other people's children.

Parents may post pictures or links to galleries of their own young children if they wish, however, when posting pictures of their teenage children, they should consider that their teen children should really give permission of such use, see Rule 4.3 below.

4.3) Carefully consider the ramifications before posting pictures of anyone else. When posting pictures of teenage or adult friends, please consider your actions. You may feel that it's 'just fine' but your friend may wonder at how appropriate it is for their image to published on the Internet, downloaded by people who they don't know, and the possibility that it could be used on the web in later months and years without permission or traceability. The Management Committee of FirstSigns do not publish pictures of their friends and family without clear explicit permission.


5. Threats to self injure 'unless' someone does something are not permitted.

5.1 Suicide notes are not permitted, and will be deleted. Discussing suicide is permitted only within the context of expressing the emotions surrounding you. The act of suicide is never the reason for posting, it is the emotional distress that is the topic that we can talk about.

People experiencing thoughts of suicide should seek professional help, and may benefit from reading this amazing article: Suicide: Read This First

6. No Religious or Political Discussion. It's OK to mention how you feel about your own beliefs, but there are other places for Religion and Politics on the web, FirstSigns is not one of those places, we must accept people of all faiths. See Rule D.ii

7. No spam, please don't continuously advertise your favourite site. You are welcome to suggest it, but please don't ever appear to care more about your site than the topic of the thread.

8. Moderators manage the Forums, not members.
Mods are members who have volunteered, please respect their decision even if you don't agree with it. A Mods primary directive is to keep the FirstSigns Message Board safe; this safety comes before any individuals 'personal rights to say anything' so please don't feel oppressed just because you had a single line deleted from your post, and please don't feel bad either.
Mods have Rules to stick to, and their discretion is to be respected.

9. Do not give out personal information.
~Do not post your full name, your address, your email address, your Instant Messaging Name, or anything that could allow a malicious person to track you down in real life. You may post your age, and you can put your date of birth into you profile, but you don't have to put the year.
~This includes talking about where you go to school or where you go our drinking or where you go shopping. Keep everything general. You can say "There's this really good club in Leeds I go to" but you *must* not say "I go to the Electric Ballroom every Saturday".

~To be clear and simple, do not discuss geography or where you go or who you are.

~Your email address is never disclosed by this board unless you:
a. use the 'EMAIL' button to contact a person or:
b. reply to an email from your email account.

~If you want to stay super safe, only use Private Messaging.

~Do not post email addresses at all, unless it's an official FirstSigns address which of course ends with @firstsigns.org.uk

10. Trigger Warnings. The subject of your post (if you're starting a thread) must contain a decent title so people know what they are about to read. If graphic language or disturbing subjects will be discussed then the Subject should contain the word "Trigger".

Also, you can use the following abbreviations in the subject:

SI = Self Injury
SH = Self Harm
SU = Suicide
ED = Eating Disorders
OD = Overdose

Please remember that FirstSigns does not deal with SU it is not our area.

Trigger Warnings must be used in the Subject of any Post by anyone, if the post needs it. It's best practice to put a TW in the post as well, like this:

___ Trigger Warning ___






and then leave a gap, see?


11. No Chat, IM, Text, Phones or other communications.
FirstSigns does not support the use of Chat Rooms or Instant Message (IM) programs such as ICQ, MSN, Yahoo or AOL IM. Members are not to invite other people to Chat Rooms or IM sessions on the Message Board. Members are not to invite people to phone them, or text them, (consider Rule 4.1) Members may invite people to use IM, Text, Phone etc., via PM, however, all Members are advised to consider carefully the ramifications of offering or accepting IM invitations, or giving out personal details such as phone numbers.

11.1) Any member uncomfortable with the contents of any PM may forward it to Wedge or Jules.

11.2) IM, email, phone etc. details are not allowed in Posts, Signatures or in your Profile; FirstSigns wholly disallows promotion of such details in public. Helplines and Oranisation contact details can be posted in the Websites and Awareness forum and referenced when appropriate.

Further information on how to keep yourself safe online can be found at:

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk
http://www.iwf.org.uk
http://www.childnet-int.org
http://www.chatdanger.com

12. We do not discuss specifics about Eating Disorders, such as our weight or our height, or what we have eaten. Just like we do not dicuss how big our scars are, we mustn't post specific details about EDs. We avoid such details so that we don't trigger anyone, or inspire anyone to weigh less.

13. The Personal Support Policy protects both our members and our volunteers from forming dependent relationships with individuals. We support hundreds and thousands of people throughout the year – it is not our aim to, nor are we qualified to support individuals. In fact, we consider it dangerous and invalidating to 'help' an individual, as destructive dependent relationships can form, and one can find oneself being wholly responsible for another person's happiness, when of course each individual needs to learn to take responsibility for their behaviours and emotions.

13.1) No personal support is to be asked for or given within Tables for Two. All posts needing support must be posted in the appropriate forum. The rules for Table for Two must be adhered to – please familiarise yourselves with them if using this forum.

13.2) Members are not to PM other members requesting personal support or to send PM's of a triggering nature. Any member receiving such a PM is requested not to reply, but instead to forward the PM to Wedge or Jules.

13.3) No emotional blackmail of any kind will be tolerated.

13.4) If you are feeling suicidal please post in the Emergency forum on the message board and seek real life help for yourself. Members must not tell other individual members that they are suicidal in PM's or on Table for Two.

13.5) Any member concerned about personal contact from a fellow member to please contact Wedge or Jules.

The Happy Board Rules

A. Suggestions on how FirstSigns is run should be made in the "FirstSigns" forum or emailed directly to info@firstsigns.org.uk

B. Concerns or ideas on *how* this board is Moderated should be made to Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk or Jules@firstsigns.org.uk

C. Posts should be 'On Topic' i.e. nonsense posts or silly posts are not allowed here, but naturally we expect you to have fun and be friendly in the "Making Friends" forum.

D. Posts are not allowed to discuss illegal activities, such as software piracy, warez, or MP3 downloading.
D.i Posts shall not discuss posts or situations from other Message Boards.
D.ii Posts must remain free of racist, sexist, ageist and homophobic words and thoughts. In fact any ~ism is not welcome. See Rule 6.

E. Do not Duplicate Posts. i.e. do not post in more than one forum about the same thing.
F. You are only allowed one single Account, and please note Rule 1.
F.i Post in the correct forum, as per the Title and subjects.
F.ii Do not type in ALL Capitals.
F.ii Please write in English; you may post in a different language only for short quotes or single words, like 'Hola' and "Auf Wiedersehen".
F.iii Please do not write in text-talk. Ppl who rite lyk dis can not B kwikly unnerstood n it cn b off-putting.
F.iv Please do not write in cyber-7337 (Leet) W3 R N07 H4k0RS.
F.v - When using coloured text please avoid using red as it can be upsetting or offensive to some members. It is useful to remember that some colours can be difficult to read on different background themes, so although coloured text is allowed, leaving your posts in the natural / default colour is most appropriate.

G. No Large Signatures.
What is a large signature? I don't know, let's say that your signature must not be larger than 5 lines of text and any image used instead must be less than 500px * 150px (This rule may be updated)

H. Do not state facts without backing them up. It's OK to say "I think dogs can only see in black and white" but do not say "Dogs only see in B and W" unless you accompany it with a website URI.
H.i Do not claim to work for an Organisation without backing it up. This is to stop people look at you as if you are an expert. If I said, "I'm a Vicar" many people might assume that I'm a Bible Expert, which is unfair pressure on me, and the people who ask Bible questions of me.
Instead, simply state what "industry" or "field" you work in, so I might have said, "I work in the Church".

I. All rules apply equally to your Members Profile.

J. Some areas of the Message Board require specific criteria to be fulfilled before access is granted.

Traumatic Events (TE) requires a reasonable Post Count (around 30+), and you must contact Wedge or Jules to gain entry; they will read your recent posts and decide.

The entire section and all forums within Sanctum Sanctorium (SS / 'The Sanctum') are for established members who have personal experience of the self harm syndrome. Members must PM Wedge or Jules to gain access and must:
Have personal experience of self injury; Not be involved in any research whatsoever; Not be working in health care fields; Not have artificially posted to boost your Post Count. (By posting poor quality short posts for the reason of gaining a high post count.)

'Adult Nature' requires that you be over 21 years of age, and have a post count over 30 and have been a member for more than 10 days.

Wedge or Jules will read your recent posts and decide if you may have access to The Sanctum, we want all Sanctum members to be friendly and so your posts need to be expressive and of good quality to get in (i.e. 'one word' responses or very brief posts will not be judged expressive enough to give you access to The Sanctum).

The Post Count requirement may be waived in special circumstances, such as if the Member is known to Wedge or Jules. PM your special request to Wedge or Jules.

Please note the requirements for SS may change and develop as the Community grows.